Subscribe To

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Privateer Press's Matt Wilson talks Warmachine: Tactics!

Hi, readers! We have an exciting treat for you today. Matt Wilson of Privateer Press agreed to give us an interview about Warmachine: Tactics, the computer version of their amazing tabletop miniatures game. The Growing Up Gamers crew have been big fans of Western Immoren, the setting for Warmachine, its sister game Hordes and the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying for about a decade. This is a world at war, a world of steampunk-inspired fantasy where nations go to battle with great machines of war called warjacks. Controlled and directed by powerful armored spellslingers called warcasters, these steam- and magic-powered robots are the game's namesake.

Matt Wilson, creative genius behind this world and founder of Privateer Press, is quite a guy. In addition to to being the game designer who brought us Warmachine, Matt is an accomplished artist whose work can be found both in Privateer Press products as well as in Magic: The Gathering; I highly recommend checking out his art site. Matt's company Privateer Press now makes tabletop miniature games (Warmachine, Hordes, and Monsterpocalypse), board games (Level 7, Grind, and the Bodgers line of games), hobby accessories (the Formula P3 line of paints, brushes, and hobby tools), and now is about to go electronic with Warmachine: Tactics.

A Warmachine computer game has been anticipated for a couple years, since the announcement of a partnership with Privateer Press and WhiteMoon Dreams. Two weeks ago, it was announced that Privateer Press would be going to Kickstarter to fund development of their game. We feel that this is a great move, as it allows fans to really get behind the game and have a more direct connections with the people producing it. The project launches July 10th, and we had the opportunity to ask Matt a few questions. Check out what he had to say!

Metal on Metal, by Matt Wilson

Growing Up Gamers: I
am so excited to play Warmachine on my computer! What can I as a player expect
from this? Can I build my own warcaster?

Matt Wilson: WARMACHINE: Tactics has both a multiplayer mode
and a single player campaign mode. The multiplayer mode has a lot of similarity
to the tabletop version, but as this is a different medium, we're taking
advantage of what it can do to enhance the experience, while at the same time,
eschewing that which works better on the tabletop. In the single player
campaign, while you're not building your own warcaster, you are in control of
the character's progression from level to level. Each campaign focuses on a
single central character, the first of which we'll be revealing in our
Kickstarter video.

GUG: Different characters and campaigns? Awesome! How close will
this adhere to the rules for the tabletop game? Have there been any challenges
in translating those rules to a computer game? And is there anything your team
is bringing to the digital game that couldn't be done on the tabletop?

Matt: The experience will feel familiar, but it's not the
same game. Conceptually, it's the same world and environment and we're adhering
the the same basic mechanics on a fundamental level. But the math behind the
scenes works differently. There aren't any cannon fodder soldiers that go down
when they take one point of damage as sustainability is much more crucial in a
game of this scale, lest balance be tipped too quickly in a match. And
definitely, the medium gives us the opportunity to do things like interactive
terrain, that is less viable on the tabletop. Of course, the very exciting part
of this game is getting to experience it all happening in front of your eyes.
We've taken a very cinematic approach to the action. Seeing Warjack power
attacks happening as real-time events in the middle of a combat round is just
awesome!

GUG: Are there plans to port to any consoles if the
Kickstarter is successful?

Matt: Our focus is entirely on PC and Mac, but we are
developing with other platforms in mind should the opportunity arise. The team
at WhiteMoon Dreams has designed a UI that can work on virtually any platform
with any control set. In other words, it works just as well with a touch screen
as it does with keyboard and mouse, as it does with a standard console
controller. So, if opportunities do come up in the future, we won't have to
reinvent the game from scratch.

GUG: The GUG crew is
no stranger to Kickstarter; we (as Escapade Games) used that platform to fund
our upcoming game, Storm Hollow: A Storyboard Game. Crowdfunding allows a
connection between game creators and fans that traditional publishing just did
not do, and we love the way it has allowed game designers to bring their products
to market. The press release made it pretty clear why you chose to crowdfund
Warmachine: Tactics. I would follow up and ask, why now?

Matt: It took a long time for me to believe that Kickstarter
was the right route for us to take in order to make this game. While
Kickstarter has quickly proven to be a powerful platform for fundraising, it's
still a new platform, and one that is little understood. We needed time to
study it, to determine if the risks inherent in crowd sourcing are worth
accepting given what we are trying to achieve, and to understand the actual
business necessary to manage a successful Kickstarter project. The majority of
Kickstarters fail. Of those that fund, many individuals and businesses alike
find that they have not properly planned how to manage the capital that they've
raised. In conducting a Kickstarter, you're making a huge promise to the people
who back your project, and more than anything, we wanted to be confident that
we could deliver on that promise. So, before our project will even launch, we
have put a great deal of time, effort and money
into developing enough of WARMACHINE: Tactics so that our potential
backers can have the same confidence we do.

The myth about Kickstarter is that it's a place to fund
ideas. We're not Kickstarting an idea, we're Kickstarting a project that is in
motion, that has proof-of-concept and a business plan, and that is being
executed by an experienced team with overhead and expenses that must be
maintained during this startup period prior to even launching the project on
Kickstarter. Getting to this point, responsibly, took time, and I wouldn't have
wanted to launch it a moment sooner.

GUG: Why does Privateer Press need Kickstarter? There has
been a lot of talk among fans of crowdfunding as to who belongs there, whether
or not bigger players should be there, even suggesting that they might be
edging out independent studios. What can you say about that and the kind of
commitment it takes to delve into making a video game, and whether it would
have been possible to do otherwise?

Matt: For Privateer and WhiteMoon Dreams, the two practical
routes to getting a WARMACHINE video game made are the traditional
publisher/financier method, which entails lengthy review processes and a great
deal of expense on the part of the developer in an effort to try and align the
product they are trying to make with the right financing entity — which in the
current video game industry environment I would liken to trying to force a
planetary alignment with your own bare hands — or, crowd sourcing. For a
company the size of Privateer Press, creating a brand new video game isn't
analogous to creating new board game product, it's literally launching an all
new business. In order to make this happen on a timeline that is within the
foreseeable future and not have to nut away funds for the next ten or fifteen
years, saving up enough to launch such a venture, crowd sourcing has become a
viable and attractive opportunity.

Kickstarter itself has released its own stand on what's
appropriate for Kickstarter. The idea that 'bigger players' have a negative
impact on other projects is a theory with no scientific support. Instead,
Kickstarter has proven the positive impact 'big players' (or let's say popular
companies and personalities) have had on the community as a whole because all
the data they have shows how many first-time backers those big projects brought
in, and how many of those backers went on to back other projects on
Kickstarter. Whether or not Privateer is a 'big player' is somewhat in the eye
of beholder. The fact is, we're totally independent, as is WhiteMoon Dreams.
But Privateer does have its own community of players and I believe that many of
them are going to be first-time backers on Kickstarter with this project, which
means we'll also be helping the Kickstarter community grow by conducting our
project there and exposing new people to the platform and all the projects
going on there.

The best thing about Kickstarter is that its patrons are the
ones that ultimately decide what belongs there or not. Anyone arguing that a
particular project shouldn't have been on Kickstarter because of its owner's
pre-established popularity, is arguing against the very spirit of Kickstarter,
which is that the 'crowd' has been given the power to decide. Beyond the terms
of use that Kickstarter has defined, it's not for any individual to say what
should or shouldn't be put on Kickstarter — the community of Kickstarter users
will decide that as a whole, and currently, the community as a whole does not
appear to agree with the negative sentiment.

GUG: We are big fans of Magic: The Gathering, a game you are
certainly familiar with, given your illustrations can be found on a number of
cards for that game. A few years back, Wizards of the Coast released Duels of the Planeswalkers, a great videogame version of Magic available for consoles.
Aside from being fun, that game serves as an excellent tutorial for learning to
play Magic and has been phenomenal for bringing new players to that game. Do
you anticipate Warmachine: Tactics having a similar role?

Matt: WARMACHINE: Tactics will be a great way to introduce
people to the ideas of the game and the setting, and we certainly hope it will
introduce more people to the hobby of tabletop gaming, but it doesn't function
as a tutorial. In the Magic example, you're actually playing the same cards
with the same rules in the video game that you are in the physical game. But
WARMACHINE: Tactics is somewhat different in scope, and the mechanics that must
be understood on the tabletop are largely invisible in the video game
experience, so you're not likely to come away from WARMACHINE: Tactics fluent
in all of the rules necessary to know in order to play the tabletop game But
you will understand the fundamental strategies and the nuance of how different
elements in your squad interact and support each other. I do think being good
in one would give you some advantage in the other.

GUG: Since tabletop
Warmachine is not a solo game, we were wondering about the depth of the
campaign mode versus multiplayer mode. Do you expect most players to spend more
time playing in multiplayer mode, with the campaign being sort of a tutorial? Additionally, will
there be an AI for solo play outside of campaign mode?

Matt: The single player game is not a tutorial, but it will
be a great way to learn the depth and strategy of the game because it does
structure your learning experience through the course of the campaign. But the
single player campaign is where we get to tell our story, and that's something
that both Privateer and WhiteMoon Dreams share — a love of great stories. So
making sure we had an amazing campaign experience has always been a requirement
of the project. Whether or not more people will play mulitplayer than the
campaign, or vice versa, I can't predict. But the multiplayer environment is
going to be something that is constantly expanding, so I suspect that
always-fresh experience will keep people engaged in multi-player quite a bit.
We're not just doing one campaign, though — it's a big world with a lot of
characters, so the single player experience will also be something that is
constantly fresh. And we are building an arena where you can test your squad
builds against an AI, for sure.

GUG: Sounds great! Will we see our favorite Warmachine warcasters in
campaign mode?

Matt: There are dozens of warcasters in the setting, so
whether or not you see your favorite featured immediately remains to be seen!
But the ultimate goal is to realize as much of the setting as possible in this
game. And the better we do with our Kickstarter campaign, the more we'll be
able to get in there.

GUG: Many of the fans
of Warmachine are miniature hobbyists (myself included!) and would say that
some of the fun of the game is painting models to bring to the table. Will
there be a nod to the creative types, perhaps the option to "paint"
warjacks and units with customized colors, or choose alternate color schemes?

Matt: All I can say right now is that we're hobbyists, too,
so this isn't something we have overlooked. Okay, I'll also say, "Stretch
Goal".

GUG: Thanks for that tidbit! Where in the Warmachine timeline does this take place,
or is it outside that timeline? Prime starts in 604 A.R., and Colossals takes
us to 608 A.R.

Matt: The campaign is going to feature characters that are
new to WARMACHINE, some of them introduced in next year's expansion book,
Vengeance. As such, the timeline is concurrent with the timeline in the story
found in the game books.

GUG: In terms of the collaboration and division of labor
between WhiteMoon Dreams and Privateer Press, how involved has Privateer been
in the development, and what level of freedom has been afforded to WhiteMoon
Dreams to make their mark on Warmachine: Tactics? What has been done to ensure
the game feels like Western Immoren, the world of Warmachine?

Matt: The level of collaboration between Privateer and
WhiteMoon Dreams is huge and will have a huge effect on the outcome of the
game. I'm personally part of the core gameplay design team. I'm also
storyboarding character animations and cinematics and I'm leading the writing
on the campaign story. In doing all of that, I'm also drawing on the resources
at Privateer, like Jason Soles and DC in development, and Doug Seacat, our lead
writer, who can assist with making sure the story and game are as faithful to
the tabletop game as possible. But there's no real give-and-take here, like one
might expect, because WhiteMoon Dreams is 100% invested in making a game that
looks and feels as true to WARMACHINE as it can. We're so totally aligned in
our goals, and I spend so much time with both companies now, it often feels to
me like one giant organization. Even moreso as we've been developing these new
characters for both the tabletop game and video game. We've got rules being
developed at Privateer that are getting interpreted into the video game at
WhiteMoon Dreams, and we've got artwork being created at WhiteMoon Dreams that
will appear in our books and that our sculptors are using to create miniatures
for the tabletop. It's an incredible level of synergy to see happening between
two distinct companies and the end result is that we're going to bring
WARMACHINE to life in video game form. It's one of the most exciting things I've
ever been a part of.

--

I hope that you are all as excited about Warmachine: Tactics as we are! We will link to the Kickstarter once it goes live. In addition, Matt has agreed to do a follow-up interview at that time. I'm sure we'll have loads more questions once we see what the backer tiers and stretch goals are! Do you guys have any questions for Matt? Leave them below! Here's the teaser trailer: